Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox Employees, Blizzard President and Chief Design Officer Are Also Leaving

Tsing

The FPS Review
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The Verge has obtained an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer that can confirm Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox.

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Well they have had a leadership issue and it might be time to clean house some. I'm sure a lot of folks will say Bad MS. But only time will tell.
 
Why on earth is there 22.000 people working at a game developer? That's insane. No wonder they can't make anything right. The dev team on a game should not be more than a few hundred people. So unless they are working on 100 AAA titles simultaneously this company needs to shed 90% of it's bloat not 10%.
 
MadMummy76 said:
Why on earth is there 22.000 people working at a game developer? That's insane. No wonder they can't make anything right. The dev team on a game should not be more than a few hundred people. So unless they are working on 100 AAA titles simultaneously this company needs to shed 90% of it's bloat not 10%.
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They are talking about the whole MS gaming division, not just actiblizz.
 
Denpepe said:
Given their lack of first party exclusives last gen, they can use all the help they can get.
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Yup.

In the past couple of years, I can think of... Starfield - as far as big budget AAA releases. And there's Forza franchise, but not sure that's a console-driving title, and Halo had a relatively recent release but I haven't heard anything good about it - more people hyped over Master Chief collection on Steam. I'm sure there are others, I just can't think of them off hand, whereas I can rattle off almost a dozen on the Sony side of the house, and I don't even own a Playstation any longer.

Now that they own A/B, as well as Zenimax and such - I expect that to change but MS has been really slow to leverage that. The Xbox/PC duality and Steam as a release partner still makes me wonder if they have the right strategy for their console. Sure seems like they are just firing the shotgun at the wall and hoping to hit the target
 
Honestly a focus on Console as a testing platform for games with Xbox live subs and then PC releases/full releases makes sense to me.

It's effectively what Sony is doing. lol.
 
Grimlakin said:
Honestly a focus on Console as a testing platform for games with Xbox live subs and then PC releases/full releases makes sense to me.

It's effectively what Sony is doing. lol.
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I ain't sure that's the right path for MS. They'd loose on making PC a secondary platform. e.g. If starfield would've been an XBOX game and only ported to PC later I'd never have paid as much for it. I'd have waited until it hits the bargain bin with all expansions included for $20.

I think even Sony would make more profit if they released their games on PC at the same time. But their focus is not profit with first party titles but trying to sell more consoles. But I'm done buying consoles.
 
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